


OC Albums: Olivia Poisson

by Omnitrix_12



Series: OC Albums [4]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Business, Coming of Age, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Heartbreak, Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 09:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30019899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnitrix_12/pseuds/Omnitrix_12
Summary: Today, she is one of the most widely-known businessmammals in Zootopia. Financier of startups, advocate of mustelids, frequent headliner of tabloids, and both ultimate shield and sword against anyone who gets in her way. But what was this shady skunk like once upon a time?
Relationships: Parents - Relationship
Series: OC Albums [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1412212
Comments: 2





	OC Albums: Olivia Poisson

“ **If you can’t ride, can you fall?”**

“ **I suppose anyone can fall,” said Shasta.**

“ **I mean can you fall and get up again without crying, and mount again and fall again and yet not be afraid of falling?”**

“ **I’ll… I’ll try,” said Shasta.**

“ **Poor little beast,” said the horse in a gentler tone. “I forget you’re only a foal. We’ll make a fine rider of you in time.”**

**The Horse and His Boy** **by C.S. Lewis**

Like buried seeds, the most notable of people often lie covered and dormant, waiting for the time to come to light, and like a shoot that first moment of breaking out is seldom seen or noticed.

For one small skunk, it began with a brochure for a summer camp.

She was in a tourist shop on the outskirts of Zootopia when she first saw it, tucked among pamphlets and coupons for mini-golf and parasailing tours. The picture on the front, of a group of smiling kids, captured her attention and drew her paw almost magnetically to pick it up and start looking through the paper.

Not ten feet away her father was trying to sway the shopkeeper. He’d had another unsuccessful day trying to sell his home-made perfumes, colognes, soaps, and shampoos. Now he was making a last-ditch effort to convince the manager to let him sell them there.

“It hardly takes up any space at all,” Arthur Poisson reasoned, holding up the box to show and maintaining his most diligent Amarecan mannerisms, although his thick accent proved his overseas origins. “It will fit right on the shelf.”

The camel looming over him folded his arms. “Look, Mac, no offense,” he said in a tone which clearly denoted offense, “but perfumes, colognes, and deodorants made by a skunk? Seriously?”

“Very seriously,” answered Arthur, taking the familiar insult and readily turning it into part of his pitch. “If it works for a skunk it will work for any mammal. You cannot smell me, can you?”

At this the ungulate made a show of sniffing, and had to admit – if only to himself – that the skunk smelled just fine. Rather aromatic, in fact, with a distinct aroma of cedar, a touch of some spice (it might have been cinnamon), and no stronger a musk than would be acceptable in any mammal more aromatic than a fawn.

The slight dilation of the camel’s nostrils was not lost on Arthur. “You see?” he asked. “Original cologne, blended by myself and my wife to meet the strongest of needs.”

The camel held his ground. “You can smell like a rose garden, but if mammals see skunks hanging around here they won’t come close enough to the shop to know how you smell.”

This haggling was beginning to wear on Arthur. That kind of stigma – realistic as it might be – was exactly what he hoped to overcome with his products. He had tried selling his wares among other mustelids with modest success, but it had had little effect on society’s view of them even in his localized area. What made matters worse was that, with the way most skunks struggled to get job interviews, much less jobs, he could barely make any kind of profit on his scents. That was no position for a family man to be in. This stop had been more than just an effort to increase his sales. It was an effort, on a wing and a prayer as the saying went, to place his products where they just might gain some more widespread recognition. It was a bid for his family.

“I will sell them to you at no markup,” he offered, throwing his paw in completely. “Sell them at whatever profit you wish. That’s the best I can offer, and you will be rid of me and… of us.” He couldn’t bring himself to use ‘rid of’ and ‘my daughter’ in one breath.

The camel sighed. “I’ll take them on _consignment,_ ” he relented, stressing the last word. “Anybody buys, I’ll set aside your cut. That’s all I’m willing to do. Take it or leave it.”

Arthur hung his head at the thought of going home to his wife and little Guseppe with only empty paws and the dust on his and Olivia’s clothes to show for the day’s efforts. Furthermore this shopkeeper could easily cheat him out of his share by selling bottles and claiming they were stolen.

Still, a mammal had to take risks to move forward in this life. “So be it,” he said, placing the box of small bottles into a niche on the shelf.

Back at the pamphlets, Olivia had been gazing at the joys of summer camp: swimming, games, ropes courses, nature trails, and even a zip line. What caught her most was the fun the kids seemed to be having. Picture after picture, the smiles of mammals in every shape and size called to her.

She managed, however, to hear her father finishing up his business arrangements and quickly hid the brochure inside her shirt. She wanted to look at it more, but she doubted whether he would approve. Summer camp was way out of their price range.

“Come, Olivia,” called her father, making for the door. “We have outstayed our welcome.”

* * *

“Papa,” asked Olivia as they climbed into the family’s less than stellar automobile, “what does ‘consignment’ mean?”

Arthur sighed. “Well, consignment means that instead of him buying the products directly and then selling them for more, he is waiting until  _he_ sells them before he gives me any money.”

“Oh.” For a five-year-old, Olivia was already fairly knowledgeable about business affairs. She understood cost, overhead, profit, markup, and things of that nature as readily as most children understood the characters on their favorite television shows. This consignment business was a new thing to her, though – and disappointing, since Papa had promised that if he sold his products he’d use some of the money to buy something nice for dinner. “Why would he do that?” she asked, puzzled.

“Well, he has to deal with fickle tourists and the like, so if he bought whatever someone brought him to sell he would risk having a lot of things nobody wanted,” explained Arthur, trying to speak the best of his detractor. It seemed to him the Christian thing to do, and he wanted to set a good example for his daughter.

Olivia, sweet young kit that she was, was not yet skilled in this kind of willful ignorance. “I thought it was because we were skunks.”

Arthur sighed. “That might be part of it, yes.”

* * *

Over dinner that night, Olivia’s parents discussed the day’s events and non-events in between feeding and tending to Guseppe, their first progeny born on Amarecan soil.

“It doesn’t seem to be getting any better, dear,” said Mama, or Yvette Poisson.

“It will,” he answered firmly. “I just need one good… how is it said here? Ah, break. One good break, and we can begin to do things.”

She shook her head in answer. “What if you tried selling your formulas through another company?”

“No. No, no, not in a thousand years. They would buy the recipes, we would have a few dollars, and that would be the end of that. No, the only way to do this is on my own. Well, our own.”

Olivia watched as her mama gazed thoughtfully at Papa. “You are doing this for the family, yes? Not out of pride?”

“I am doing it for both,” he answered firmly. Then, pausing, he added, “And we should not talk of these things now. Olivia, what is it you have been hiding all this while?”

At this abrupt turn, Olivia blinked and pulled back. “Hiding?”

“Yes, inside your shirt. It was a…” he paused, searching for the word. “…brochure from the rack; I saw that much. I just hope the shopkeeper didn’t think you were stealing.”

Sheepishly, she brought out the pamphlet and handed it to Papa. He and Mama opened it and gazed at the contents.

“I liked the pictures,” Olivia offered meekly.

Her papa glanced at his wife, and the two exchanged smiles. Mama’s was a little sad, as if she thought Olivia might as well wish to have a pet dragon as wish to go to camp. Papa looked uncertain as well, but forced himself to smile more encouragingly.

“I promise you, Olivia,” he said, closing the brochure and pointing it at her, “when we have the money you will go to this camp, and have the best week of your life.”

Heart swelling, Olivia lunged toward her papa and hugged him while Mama looked on. Part of Yvette honestly worried that her husband might be raising hopes in their little girl which might well never come to pass.

The other part, which she forcibly pulled to the front, remembered a saying which Arthur had heard soon after their immigration and firmly took as a matter of creed.

‘The harder I work,’ he would say, ‘the luckier I get.’

Arthur Poisson was a dreamer for certain, and prone to take on challenges too big for any skunk. One thing about him, though: he never went back on a promise for anything. He’d get her that week of camp or die trying.

* * *

Olivia knew her parents would be having an interesting talk that night, so after she had brushed her teeth and Papa had read her a bedtime story, she asked for a glass of water. Then, when she had drunk it, she asked Papa to leave the cup.

“I might get thirsty in the middle of the night,” she said.

He chuckled. “Alright, dear. Just remember not to get _too_ thirsty.” It had been some time since she had wet the bed, and they were hoping not to have another repetition.

When she could tell by the sounds that her parents were getting ready for bed themselves, she slipped to the wall dividing their rooms and put the open end of the glass up against it. By putting her ear to the bottom end  and listening hard, she was able to hear what they were talking about.

“I wish you wouldn’t get her hopes up,” said Mama.

“Don’t worry, my love,” answered Papa tenderly. “I have thought this over. I will not mention it to her again, but I wish to set money aside for her camp, little by little, and not tell her. Perhaps we can combine it with her birthday or Christmas present. Then when we have enough we will tell her the good news. Until then we should say no more if we can help it, so as to give her nothing more definite to expect than that it will come eventually.”

Mama sounded doubtful, but she agreed that this was a good plan. “We will have to discuss how much we can afford to set aside.”

“Yes, yes. I have tomorrow off from work, and I can visit you at your job to discuss it while you are on break.”

“Agreed. And don’t forget to take care of the flowers while you are out.”

“Of course. They are more critical now than ever. But come, my dear, and let us talk no more of such things, yes?”

What followed led Olivia to suspect they were getting cozy, and she put the glass away. She had heard the important part: they were resolved to save up, but had no idea when they would have enough. It was reassuring, but at the same time the fact that even they didn’t know when it would be was maddening.

She decided it would be more fun to be surprised, but maybe there was a way she could  help it along.

* * *

The next day at school, Olivia took advantage of a break between classes to ask Mrs. Hartmann, her teacher, if there was anything she could do around the classroom to earn some money.

The deer gazed in confusion at Olivia, meeting her on eye level as she was a mouse deer. “You need some money?” she asked. “What for?”

Olivia explained about the summer camp and her parents saving up. Mrs. Hartmann thought about it for a moment. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t have you doing things around the classroom for money. It would be against the law.”

Olivia had to ask what those were, and when Mrs. Hartmann told her about the old days in factories and how now there were minimum ages for pretty much any profession you could name she hoped no one would arrest her papa for letting her help with the plants and mixtures.

“I do have an idea, though,” the doe added. “You could ask your neighbors if they have any yard work for you to do; mowing lawns, weeding gardens, that sort of thing.”

The only problem with this plan was that Olivia’s parents didn’t want her talking with most of the neighbors, who tended to be a pretty surly bunch with some unattractive habits. Papa always said that they were going to move somewhere better suited to children as soon as they had a strong enough income.

This suggestion, though, did give her another idea, and later when Mrs. Hartmaan confiscated a note being passed around, she could only smile and shake her head.

It read,  _‘Yard work? Ask Olivia.’_

* * *

At first it seemed like Olivias efforts were for naught. Despite telling other classmates at every opportunity, and passing enough notes that even patient Mrs. Hartmaan had to stop letting her off the hook, she couldn’t seem to pick up any customers. Then after nearly a month of trying, she got her break.

“Hey, Olivia, you’re taking yard work, right?” asked a voice behind her at the water fountain one day.

She turned around to find a badger from one of the other classes behind her. Although she didn’t share a classroom she knew who this girl was: Tess. Everyone in school knew about her, mostly because she was so very upper-crust; always the latest clothes, always bought whatever she liked at lunch without a thought to how much money was in her purse (she never wore clothes with pockets; said they made her hips look too wide), and always had some remark about her parents’ new car or the size of her pool or house. This made Olivia the more hopeful. A girl with that kind of money could surely afford to pay nicely for a pool cleaning or a well-mowed lawn. To make matters even better, she happened to know that although they lived on different streets Tess’ neighborhood was just a short walk from her own as the crow flew.

Eagerly, Olivia explained about summer camp and her goal of saving up, and added a short list of the kinds of work she’d done getting rocks and sticks out of her yard and mowing the grass when they were too busy. The smile that gradually grew on Tess’ face was, she hoped, that of a satisfied job interviewer. Her hopes were not in vain.

“My parents’ maid is on emergency leave; something about having a baby,” said Tess. “Mom and Dad, uh, haven’t had time to find someone else to get the pool cleaned, so I’m thinking having it done would be a good way to surprise them. And maybe convince them that I’m mature enough for a new pet; something a bit more exciting than an iguana.”

Olivia nodded thoughtfully. “Your pool is pretty big, isn’t it?” she asked.

Tess started to nod, then checked herself and shrugged. “Oh, it’s not _that_ big,” she said airily. “We’re just badgers, after all; not that much bigger than you.”

“But you always said-”

“I know, I know,” Tess hemmed, “but I always say stuff like that when no one’s coming over.”

Olivia wondered at this strangely confidential manner her usually aristocratic peer was adopting with her. Still, a job was a job as her father always said, so she pressed ahead. “How much to clean it?” she asked.

Tess made a show of thinking. “I’ll pay… ten dollars.”

Ten dollars was not that much for some mammals, but on the rare occasions when the Poissons ate out as a special treat, it was nearly the amount her papa spent to feed the four of them. Olivia readily agreed. “Deal. I’ll have to call my parents and let them know I’m visiting a friend.” She started to maneuver through the crowd of kids, then doubled back. “Uh, got a quarter for the pay phone?”

The badger snorted slightly, then shrugged and dug in her purse. “I’ll call it a tip,” she reasoned, handing over the coin with a slight roll of her eyes.

If she had expected to surprise her parents with the news, she was in for a double shock when Mama answered the phone. _“Hello?”_

“Hi Mama, it’s Olivia.”

“ _Olivia! Is everything alright at school?”_

“Better than alright. I’ve been hi- I mean, I’ve been invited to go over to a friend’s house for a while this afternoon. Is that alright?”

Mrs. Poisson was silent for a moment. _“You’ve been invited to a friend’s house?”_ People didn’t invite skunks places. Well, not people who weren’t skunks too. It wasn’t done.

“Yes, Her name’s Tess, and she lives in the nice houses just the other side of the woods. I’m going to visit her for a few hours – if it’s okay, of course.”

Mama was silent for a long moment, then consented. _“Well, yes dear, of course. This is good news. Maybe it’s a sign, even.”_

“A sign?”

“ _Oh, that’s right. I forgot to tell you, your papa has wonderful news. Arthur, come! Olivia is on the phone!”_

Olivia listened as Mama filled Papa in on what they had just said, then hastily added,  _“Here, you tell her what’s happened.”_

A moment later her father spoke.  _“Olivia? Oh, this is perfect timing. You remember the batch on consignment?”_

Olivia nodded, wishing she could forget that unpleasant camel. “Yes?”

“ _Well, someone from up in Baashington state visited the store and bought several bottles. She called me today and wants to stock our merchandise! She’s even sending a check in advance!”_

Olivia gasped. “Really?”

“ _Yes. This is wonderful, dear. Interstate exposure! Oh, it will take time, but we are moving forward!”_

It was almost too good to believe. Granted the matter of sales in another state was a little outside Olivia’s grasp, but the very fact that someone had approached Papa about selling his wares, instead of him talking them into it, blew Olivia out of the water. That and having a client for her yard work business… things were finally turning around.

* * *

Olivia had never ridden the bus to Tess’s neighborhood before, so it was no surprise that most of the kids paid her little notice except to ask what she was doing with them. At least fewer remarks about mustelids came up, perhaps because Tess was so closely related to a skunk and a regular on this ride. It was clear that everyone wanted to be her friend.

‘ _Someday that’s going to be me,’_ thought Olivia. _‘When Papa makes a lot of money and we all smell nice because of his perfumes.’_

When they got to Tess’s neighborhood, Olivia’s mouth fell open. The smallest house in sight was bigger than her neighborhood! Every yard was immaculately mowed. Several had volleyball courts, rock gardens,  and one had a particularly nice statue of a horse holding a lantern.

“Oh, I _love_ those horse statues,” Olivia remarked on seeing this last. “Mama and Papa told me all about them.”

Tess glanced her way as if only just remembering she was there. “What?” she asked. Then she looked at the statue. “Huh. For once the Joneses are behind on a trend. They still have their horse statue up.”

This came as a surprise to Olivia, and quite a disappointment. While her parents had prepared for naturalization as Amarecan citizens, they had talked and quizzed each other endlessly about their new country’s laws, customs, and history. During those talks she had learned from them that these horse statues were once a sign to runaway slaves, telling them the mammals in a house were friendly. Here, it seemed, that rich piece of history was just a fad, and a fad on its way out.

* * *

The girls were the only ones to get off in that neighborhood, and to Olivia’s surprise Tess fished out a key on a string around her neck and let herself in.

“You have your own key?” she asked.

Tess looked at her as if she had just asked whether she walked on two paws. “Well, yeah. It’s my house.” She wiped her feet on a thick mat, then waved for Olivia to follow her. “Come on. The pool’s out back.”

Despite what Tess had said, the pool looked plenty big to Olivia. Easily big enough for two elephants, the water winked bright and clear in the sunlight except for bits of plant debris from the trees, either floating on the surface or sunk to the bottom.

It occurred to Olivia as she stared at the expanse which might as well have been a lake to someone her size that she had no idea how pools were cleaned.

Tess waved toward a shed nearby. “The maid cleans it with a thing like a big screen flyswatter,” she explained with a shrug. “Oh, and I need you to do it by thre… no, make that two fifty so my parents can be surprised when they get home. Can you do that?”

A deep and unsettling feeling came over Olivia that the job was literally just too big for her. Still, it was good money and she’d hate to come all this way and have to walk home for nothing. “I’ll do it,” she promised.

Cleaning the pool proved to be one of the more difficult tasks of Olivia’s life. Figuring out how the extensions went together was not too difficult, but they were so big. It wouldn’t have been so hard for a larger animal to lift the apparatus, Even Tess, with her thick, stout limbs, probably could have managed it easily. It took her hat felt like forever, though, just to get a handle on how to maneuver it across the pool. Then she had to gather as much of the debris – it looked like maybe some kind of tree pollen – into the net, drag it out of the pool, unfasten the scoop and the first bit of pipe handle from the rest of the handle (the whole thing was too heavy for the last part) and dump the net outside the fence encircling the pool. Then she had to reconnect and do it over again, all the while contending with the way the pollen swirled and scattered at every pass of the net. She had to give up chasing after the stray bits, hoping that they would re-cluster or get sucked into the pool filters by the time she was done with the larger clumps.

Despite her efforts, she had managed to get the top of the pool reasonably clear in an hour. The hardest part was yet to come, however. She eyed the dark clumps of plant debris on the bottom of the pool, angled the scoop down deep… and then took a wrong step. Like a catapult with a loose rope, the handle of the scoop yanked her right into the pool.

Fortunately Olivia knew quite well how to swim. As limited as her parents were, they had made it a point to get her swimming lessons in case of any such emergency. Letting go of the handle, she kicked to the surface and coughed, grabbing the side. She felt the handle slip by her foot and, on impulse, hooked it with her feet while grabbing the side of the pool with her paws.

Now she was in a dilemma. Getting out of the pool in wet clothes would have been hard enough, but holding onto the handle as she was would make it almost impossible. On the other paw, if she let go and let the handle fall down into the pool, she might never be able to fish it up again. She didn’t know whether or not she’d be able to dive down to the bottom, and if she didn’t finish the job it was no guarantee she’d get paid. Tess had been pretty clear about wanting it done on time.

After a moment’s thought, she let go with one paw and jerked her foot to bring the handle’s top in arm’s reach. With a grab of her free paw she tossed the handle past her so that it came to rest against her body. After that it was a struggle, but not impossible, to pull herself out of the pool and grab the handle.

Cleaning the rest of the pool was no treat, between the fact that her dress was soaking wet and the scoop seemed twice as hard to maneuver now that she was all the way opposite the business end and had next to no leverage. The only thing easier was that the debris at the bottom seemed less inclined to swirl around and slip out of the scoop. Still, it was a hareculean task to finish it. She had only just finished when Tess came bustling out the back door. The badger gaped at her hireling, now barely past the dripping stage.

“Did you go swimming?” she asked, clearly displeased with what she saw.

Olivia shook herself. “Not on purpose,” she defended.

Tess shook her head and went to look at the pool. She was looking for an excuse to dock Olivia’s pay, but to her surprise the pool was as clean as a mammal could ask. The bottom had been scraped spotless, and the last bits of surface debris were already vanishing into the filters like trickles of rainwater down a storm drain.

“Can I go now?” asked Olivia. “My parents will be wondering-”

“Yeah, fine,” Tess said quickly, fishing out some bills. She rifled them, grabbed a ten, and stuffed it into Olivia’s paw. Then she bustled her toward the fence and reached up to open the gate. “Now listen up. Do you have everything you brought?”

Olivia started to nod, then dashed back for her backpack and grabbed it up.

“Good. Now, go wait by the bushes outside the fence. When you hear me and my parents talking, head for the road. You can get back home, right?”

Olivia nodded, and Tess waved her out the gate. “And don’t make noise,” she added before shutting the gate.

Wondering why she wasn’t to make noise, Olivia waited by the bushes as she’d been told. She heard the back door shut and then a few minutes’ silence. As she waited it occurred to her that she was very thirsty, and she wondered if she could call out to Tess for a glass of water. She didn’t, though. The part about no noise had been specific.

While she was trying to sort out why Tess was being so secretive about hiring her, a sound of indistinct talk came from inside. The back door opened, and out came Tess and what must have been her parents.

“Hm. Nice job,” approved a man’s voice. “Very nice for your first time.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” said Tess with a shrug.

“It was a good couple of hours’ work,” her mom countered. “See, dear, I told you she could handle it.”

Peeking through a narrow gap in the fence, Olivia saw Tess’ father throw up his paws. “Alright, you win. Nicely done, sweetheart.”

“Thanks, Dad. So, thirty bucks, right?”

“As promised,” he answered, fishing in his pocket.

Tess’ mother patted her on the back as she sweetly accepted the payment. “I hope you learned something about hard work today, honey,” she said. “It’s not enough to be born with opportunities. You have to make the most of them.”

“Oh, I have, Mom,” Tess promised.

As the badgers went inside talking about plans for a cookout supper, Olivia stared after them and then at the bill unconsciously crumpled in her paw.

It didn’t take a math whiz to see how she’d been duped. No wonder Tess had been so secretive! Not only had she walked away with three times – well, two times in net – what she’d been paid to get the job done, but she walked away with all the credit! Even though Olivia had never really thought about recognition as part of her wages, she had a good mind to scream, shout, beat on the wall until Tess’ parents came running so they could know the truth.

She didn’t, though. Instead, hefting her backpack, she made for the woods and walked, her clothes all but a portable sauna, back to her house and hoped her papa would have some deodorant soap she could use. She was going to stink.

* * *

By the time Olivia had reached home her mood had lifted… a little.  She was still miffed that Tess had made such a tidy profit on her labors, but  she forced herself to remember what her papa always said: progress was progress. Even if someone else had made more money, that didn’t change the fact that she was still ten dollars closer to  summer camp than she had been. She’d just have to be smarter next time she did someone else’s chores.

As she was thinking over how to get the better of Tess the next time around, she slipped in the back door of her home. Her thought was to change out of her sweaty, grubby dress before her parents knew she’d been working her paws off. She had forgotten for the moment her previous plans of keeping her own savings a secret, thinking now that the chance to surprise them with her cache would make up for her earlier disappointment.

So she thought, at least, until she went in and heard her parents, as it seemed, in the middle of a heated argument.

“… could this happen?!” her papa was crying in abject grief. “A whole batch ruined beyond repair!”

“Darling,” protested her mother’s voice, evidently straining to maintain an air just a few degrees calmer than Arthur’s. “Cam down. You can make more perfume, can’t you?”

“Out of what? Dragon blood and unicorn tears?” he answered in poorly toned sarcasm. “Those were my last ingredients and your best flowers, and we were counting on the money from that sale, not to mention the business! How long did it take me just to get one little store to stock my wares, and this could ruin it utterly!”

Forgetting about her sullied state and the pawful of money, Olivia moved toward the kitchen. She could not smell the stench of burned flowers and something else that smelled like it had gone rancid.

“We still have a little set aside,” her mother soothed.

“What, the money for Olivia?” he countered in disbelief. “How can you suggest a thing like that?”

Olivia didn’t even register what her mother said in reply. The money for her camp trip? How could they? She’d just brought home a hard-earned ten dollar bill to put towards that. They couldn’t spend everything they had saved up!

Her papa’s words broke through her thoughts. “I don’t care what it does to my business,” he answered in a low, resolute voice. “I can’t take that money, but… oh, _qu'allons-nous faire à ce sujet?! C'est une catastrophe!”_

Though she had heard her papa get excited over his work, both with joy and grief, this last outburst struck Olivia like a bucket of cold water. Her papa always maintained that they were Amarecans and they should speak English. Apart from the odd word here or snatch there, he only spoke his native French when he wanted to keep secrets from her, or when he was so overcome that he had lost all composure.

She poked just far enough around the corner to observe her parents. Her papa sat slumped in a chair with his back to the door. Mama was at his side, rubbing his back with one paw while the other wrapped around Guseppe in his sling. As she looked on, Arthur buried his face in his hands and began to shake with misery.

A great weight settled in Olivia’s stomach. How had everything gone so wrong? How much trouble were they in?

Then, acting on some fresh resolution, Arthur rose from his chair and turned toward the door with such surprising abruptness that Olivia forgot to duck out of sight. Her papa froze at the sight of her and stared.

“Olivia?” he asked. Then, remembering himself, he wiped his eyes. “How… how long were you there?”

She stared at the floor, then mumbled, “The perfume’s bad, isn’t it?”

Arthur turned guiltily toward a pot on the stove, from whence the foul smell emerged. With a visible effort he mustered up the more controlled visage he had always used when propriety demanded tact. “I don’t… I don’t know what I did wrong,” he confessed. “I’ve done that recipe a dozen times, and it always worked. I can’t understand.”

Olivia looked anxiously up to her papa. “What are you going to do?”

His resolution wavered, and uncertainty showed on his face.

“I will find some way to make more money,” he vowed. “I will find a way to make good the order.”

Despite her papa’s boldness, Olivia could tell he was lying. Her parents made only just enough to cover their expenses, with barely enough to keep his business alive. Even if he did scrape enough together for new materials, the distillations had to age, he and mama both had to work… even as young and ignorant as she was, she knew it was impossible.

Unless…

Evidently Arthur had already pushed aside the impossibility of his hopes. “Come here,” he said quietly, kneeling down and holding out his arms.

She went to him, and he enfolded them both in a tender embrace hindered by nothing save the need to avoid crushing her brother.

“I’m sorry, my dears,” he said quietly.

Olivia bit her lip, then thought of the ten in her pocket. Biting her lip, she slipped a paw in and pressed the money to her papa’s arm.

He paused, then drew back and looked at the piece of paper.

“I wasn’t visiting a friend,” she admitted. “Not really. I was cleaning someone’s pool, but… you can have what I made, and the money for camp.”

Her parents stared at her in awe. Papa found his voice. “Olivia, why would you tell us…?”

“I listened to you and Mama talk about saving up for me to go,” she said. “I was wrong; I know. But I wanted to surprise you, too, so I was going to save up in secret.”

“And you would give it up now… oh, my dear,” said her father, awestruck at the gesture. Then he shook his head. “But no – _mais non._ I won’t take money from my own child. I will call the buyer. Perhaps she will understand-”

His wife’s paw on his arm halted him, and he met her gaze. She leaned in and whispered in his ear so quietly that even their daughter, standing right there, could not make out the words.

“Our daughter is showing such kindness; such love. Should not that be encouraged? Is that not better than a hundred sales?”

He considered this, then looked back at Olivia. She, heartened, held out the money again. At last he sighed.

“You are right, my love,” he said, taking the money. “I will use it, _but_ I will not forget what I have promised.”

He didn’t, either. On the spot he wrote out a check to Olivia for what they had saved – plus ten dollars – and taped it to the wall as a sign of what he had pledged. By the time he could pay it back the check would be expired, but it still gave her a lift to know the promise was there in writing.

For the next few hours they were all busy. Mama had supper to make, Papa had to run out and buy more ingredients, and Olivia took charge of watching her brother. By the evening, though, the day – if poorer by its exertions, had at least broken even and a new batch of her father’s finest was in the works.  Life would go on.

That night, after reading her a story, papa tucked her in and kissed her on the forehead. _“_ _Beaucoup de filles ont une conduite vertueuse; Mais vous les surpassez tous.”_ he said softly. “Many daughters have done virtuously, but you have surpassed them all.”

**Writing Olivia’s background proved to be an interesting challenge, especially since what I’ve done thus far builds Olivia into a more complicated character than most of the other OC Albums. Almost as interesting of a challenge was the character of Tess, since I have it on good authority that when parents work their way up to success and wealth, their kids usually come out pretty decent when all’s said. I struck a balance in her case by hinting that her mother had worked her way up whereas her father was most likely born rich, leaving Tess to play one parent off the other. Of course this still leaves the question of how Olivia ended up as we see her in Something Stinks, but that’s what the later chapters are for. For now it was enough to see her handle being at such a stark disadvantage on the financial playing field.**

**As always, the mouse deer referenced in this story is not a strange hybrid (sorry if you thought that), but a real species: the silver-backed chevrotain, a rabbit-sized ungulate from Vietnam. They were thought to have gone extinct and had never even been photographed in the wild, but after going unseen for over a century one was caught on a game trail in 2019. As of my latest information, the species is so strictly protected that even the knowledge of their location is restricted information. One can only hope these efforts pay off.**

**Arthur’s line towards the end is a verse from Proverbs 31, in which King Lemuel recounts his mother advising him on what kind of woman to marry. The exact verse in question is actually of what a husband would say of such a wife,** **accompanied by its English translation.** **Obviously Arthur is not looking at his daughter the way a husband would at a wife, but the wording itself –** **a commendation of this ideal woman’s diligence and industry –** **seemed like a good accolade to show how proud he is of his little girl.** **And for those who actually speak French natively, my apologies if I did a poor job. I had some difficulty procuring a good French translation of the Bible, so I cheated and used Google translate to just French-ify an English copy of the verse.**

**Last but not least, as a kind of requiem to Pepe Le Pew (who, much as I can see why people don't like him and have mixed feelings about him myself, I feel obliged to memorialize as a part of my childhood), I'll throw in the detail - for any who didn't know - that Olivia's name is sort of a nod to him, or rather his counterpart in** _Loonatics Unleashed_ **. In his single appearance in the show, Pierre Le Pew mentions that his cologne is called "Eau de Poisson," or "Essence of Fish." When I devised a rather shady skunk who dealt in cologne, it seemed too good a reference to pass up. Thus, "Eau de Poisson" became "O(livia).D. Poisson." Not to be confused with "poison," though there is a certain resemblance.**


End file.
